is paganism a living tradition with roots
deep in prehistory or just a collection of superstitions, magic tricks
and witches’ spells? Pagans explores the origins, history and beliefs of
Europe’s ancient religions.
Sexy Beasts
Looks back to a time
before sex was taboo, when humans saw themselves as an integral part of
the natural world. Through history and prehistory, the representations
of the ancient gods and traditions followed by pagans have been marred
by propaganda from other religious groups eager to rein in those they
defined as wild barbarians. In truth, the word pagan is a Roman
term meaning ‘country folk’, and the general concept of paganism is of
oneness with nature and a quest to fully understand the world around us.
Though historical
accounts lead us to images of stone dildo-wielding women flashing their
genitals at cattle, chieftains having sex with horses before
slaughtering them and whipping sessions in mixed saunas, the underlying
theme is of human similarity with animals and nature.
Magic Moments
Today magic is used as a
form of entertainment. It still thrills us to see an apparently
impossible phenomenon happen before our eyes. Reaching back through to
prehistoric times, the pagan magicians, who could conjure material from
nothing or predict the future, would almost certainly have been held in
the highest regard. They would not have been tricksters like the
conjurers of today. In historic and prehistoric times, it would have
taken great knowledge to understand the seasons, through their
relationship to solstice.
Predicting this yearly
cycle would have been crucial to the agricultural societies of the time –
a science to those who understood, but magic to those who didn’t. The
fine art of producing the first bronze artefacts would also have been
greatly respected. The ability to produce a knife from an ore is still
magical, even though we now understand the chemistry. As for
drug-induced shamans talking to the spirits, they must have appeared
exceptionally powerful.
Band of Brothers
According to Roman
records, the Iron Age Celtic peoples of Britain consisted of war-like
tribes – but this could well be propaganda of the age. In 43 AD, as now,
invaders found ways of justifying their subjugation of the native
people whose country they colonized and whose land they took. Whatever
the reality, the image of rough, heavy-drinking hooligans and evil
barbarians is what we have been left with. Pagan society in the Iron Age
was certainly based on a strong system of tribal groups controlling
different parts of the country, each with its own warrior class. However
the accusations of barbarism could equally be a stereotyped reaction
against these ‘uncivilised’ cultures. The truth is that, though bands of
fighting men may well have dominated much of society, the basis of a
proto-democracywas also in action.
Sacred Landscape
A strong pagan belief is
that the natural world is embedded in all of us. One method of defining
the landscape is by building monuments. The construction of tombs at the
boundaries of territory illustrates to outsiders that the area is
rightfully yours, since it belonged to your ancestors. A succession of
ritual monuments known throughout prehistoric Europe, from wooden
trackways to henges (stone or wooden circles), suggest the strong
influence of altering the landscape as a way of defining territory
within the pagan belief system.So what happens when people cannot lay
claim to their territory by marking it with the graves or other signs
that their ancestors lived there?
The Nebra Star Disc
The
Nebra Sky Disk is a bronze disk with a blue-green patina (originally
black) and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a
sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars (including a cluster
interpreted as the Pleiades). Two golden arcs along the sides, marking
the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was
another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes (of uncertain
meaning, interpreted as a Sun ship with numerous oars). The disk is
attributed to a site near Nebra in Germany, and associatively dated to
c. 1600 BCE. It has been associated with the Bronze Age Unetice culture.
The Unetice culture is distinguished by
its characteristic metal objects including ingot torcs, flat axes, flat
triangular daggers, bracelets with spiral-ends, disk- and paddle-headed
pins and curl rings which are distributed over a wide area of Central
Europe and beyond. Linguists have determined through an analysis of
hydronomic patterns that the people of this culture must have spoken
Indo-European languages, with pre-proto-Germanic characteristics in the
area to the north of the Sudeten and Ore Mountain ranges, including the
site where the Nebra Sky Disk was manufactured and deposited.
The discovery site is a prehistoric
enclosure encircling the top of a 252 metres elevation in the Ziegelroda
Forest, known as Mittelberg ("central hill"), some 60 km west of
Leipzig. The surrounding area is known to have been settled since the
Neolithic and Ziegelroda Forest is said to contain around 1,000 barrows,
whose occupants are of a physical type still common in North Central
Europe today. The enclosure is oriented in such a way that the sun seems
to set every solstice behind the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz
mountains, some 80 km to the north-west. The significance of the site to
prehistoric dwellers is underlined by the proximity to the much older
Goseck circle. Archaeologists generally agree that Goseck circle was
used for astronomical observation. Together with calendar calculations,
it allowed coordinating an easily judged lunar calendar with the more
demanding measurements of a solar calendar, embodied in a spiritual
religious context.
The Nebra Sky Disk is likewise
considered to be an astronomical instrument as well as an item of
religious significance. The find reconfirms that the astronomical
knowledge and abilities of the people of the European Bronze Age
included close observation of the yearly course of the Sun, and the
angle between its rising and setting points at summer and winter
solstice. While Stonehenge and the Neolithic circular ditches such as
the 5th millennium BCE Goseck circle were used to mark the solstices,
the disk is the oldest known portable instrument to allow such
measurements.
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